In my mind, while it is certainly not a baseless issue, I can't help but think for many it is just another bandwagon and those actually protesting an excuse not to go to school / work with a blessing. They will move on to the next thing that comes along.

Here in Vancouver, these protesters shut down the whole downtown core on a Friday afternoon and this Monday a main bridge into downtown, both after the morning rush whereby everyone went in to work and were therefore stuck captive unable to get home. It not only caused massive inconvenience and delays from the resulting gridlock, but masses of extra emissions from idling vehicles - including transit buses which equally could not move. I'm sorry, but apart from being totally selfish to 1000's going about their work day, how ridiculous to cause such unnescessary polution to the environment. Not to mention all the litter left behind - including lots of plastic. Hypocrisy. And I have not heard of any support or sympathy gained, rather the contrary.

Personally, I drive a van as an owner operator, delivering all sorts of general freight from Amazon packages, to important business docs to medical supplies. I burned loads of gas which is currently $1.60/l, I get no extra during high fuel prices or for however much or little I burn. Ultimately, we turned around and cancelled all deliveries downtown that day, customers did not get their stuff and I lost the revenue. This week, on the other side of the bridge they closed is the cities main hospital, I had urgent critical medications for a patient - I was 2 hours late. I hope the patient made it.

To the bigger picture, what are they actually expecting the government to do?

As individuals we can all do more like recycling and making alternative transport choices where possible and the local government can help people be greener by making it easy to do such things. Here in Vancouver, there are lots of provisions for cyclists, 90% of the taxi fleet are Prius's and all the buses are replaced with either electric trolleys or new CNG power. There are massive increases in the numbers of Tesla's, Prius's, electric and hybrid vehicles on our roads.

However, what these protesters here have stated they want is for the government to legislate leaving all oil and gas in the ground. That is so short sighted and ludicrous on two fronts.

First of all, while of course we need to find alternative methods of propulsion for the future, it is not going to happen over night and we need oil to live our lives as we know them. Cars, buses, aircraft, ships, delivery vehicles for every single thing you buy at a store (or have dropped at your house) all need oil. We leave ours in the ground, we stop using it? Of course not, we pay to import it from somewhere else. How smart.

Secondly, for a resource rich country like Canada, two provinces at least rely on this industry for a massive % of their GDP and all those livelihoods can't just be replaced overnight. It's easy enough to ask the government to do so, but how and with what?

As an aviation geek, so an industry I know something about to use as an example, the airline industry gets hammered for its emissions, but it is making incredible strides in reducing emissions and making mass flying greener and cleaner. It is a good example, because technology moves quickly, but can only do so incrementally as it evolves. While scientists are looking at hydrogen and electric propulsion etc etc, and we will get there one day, but in the meantime we can only improve on what we have, but even then the pressures to do so are so great they come with compromising consequences. Take the Boeing 737 MAX, a 50 year old design rushed into service with the latest generation engines. Now it is grounded after two crashes with the loss of over 350 lives and older more thirsty aircraft have to remain in service instead of going to the scrap yard. The new generation of geared turbofan engines themslves are not without problems and there have been many glitches and failures on all applications. Rolls Royce have massive issues on their new higher powered engines for the Dreamliner too, and the A380 before that. All because of massive pressure put on the airlines to create less emissions from environmentalists. It is an example of an industry that IS really trying to do their bit and my labored point is it doesn't come without compromises elsewhere and it is going to be the same for any other industry too. Air traffic control and others are all trying to do their bit too to reduce flow times etc. Fuel is saved by adding winglets, reducing weight from newer composite materials, even saving weight by removing in fight magazines and paper. Over the past 30 years the Airbus A320 that Easyjet fly for example has been in service, the % of fuel burn reduced on the aircraft coming off the line today significantly improves every year on the same basic platform due to incremental changes as technology evolves. But that is over 30 years, not overnight. But I bet most of these protesters have no idea about any of it. I also bet most of them have gone on a $1000 all inclusive trip on said aircraft at some point too (and used lots of plastic cups at the hotel...)

And why haven't Toyota (or anyone) made a Transit sized Prius yet? GM are still churning out 6.6l V8 diesels...

Rant over. Sorry for those who wasted two mnutes of their lives reading it.

Thats a great post BC Ham.....it's something everyone should have opinions on and comment on..
Then Hopefully some commonsense will come out of it...

Side note on the Electric Car thing....the Energy still has to come from somewhere,it'll move emissions
from City Centres,fair enough,but doesn't eradicate the problem....plus the Batteries...how they're
made,what's in them,where it comes from,and how we dispose of Millions of tons of Batteries every
year in the future...that's not the answer.
It's a bit of a Public Hoodwink IMO...getting people to buy new vehicles more regular,like they have
us buying new phones every year or 2..

If the worlds population was reduced by 80% then the problem would be solved. Or put another way,if people stopped reproducing for 20 years,that would would achieve similar outcome.

A mutated virus that leaves 90% people infertile would see climate change results improve in 50 years.

Thats a great post BC Ham.....it's something everyone should have opinions on and comment on..
Then Hopefully some commonsense will come out of it...

Side note on the Electric Car thing....the Energy still has to come from somewhere,it'll move emissions
from City Centres,fair enough,but doesn't eradicate the problem....plus the Batteries...how they're
made,what's in them,where it comes from,and how we dispose of Millions of tons of Batteries every
year in the future...that's not the answer.
It's a bit of a Public Hoodwink IMO...getting people to buy new vehicles more regular,like they have
us buying new phones every year or 2..

If the worlds population was reduced by 80% then the problem would be solved. Or put another way,if people stopped reproducing for 20 years,that would would achieve similar outcome.

A mutated virus that leaves 90% people infertile would see climate change results improve in 50 years.

Dan Brown's 'Inferno' revolves around a virus that would KILL 90% of the world's population.

It's a very believable story.

And would the good ol' US of A, the country that spirited Nazi scientists over to create a nuclear bomb, have such an idea in their inventory. A disease that would just happen to get airborne over Africa ?

If the worlds population was reduced by 80% then the problem would be solved. Or put another way,if people stopped reproducing for 20 years,that would would achieve similar outcome.

A mutated virus that leaves 90% people infertile would see climate change results improve in 50 years.

Dan Brown's 'Inferno' revolves around a virus that would KILL 90% of the world's population.

It's a very believable story.

And would the good ol' US of A, the country that spirited Nazi scientists over to create a nuclear bomb, have such an idea in their inventory. A disease that would just happen to get airborne over Africa ?

Makes you think.

Absolutely,a radical intervention. I wouldn't advocate any policy of intentional genocide but if the worlds population were at the numbers of 100 years ago then there would be 5 billion less.

If somehow human reproduction could be decreased for 50 years and brought to the level of 1920 then that would ease the pressure on dwindling resources.

7 Billion is considered the maximum sustainable number of people for the planet. We are already at 7.7

Dan Brown's 'Inferno' revolves around a virus that would KILL 90% of the world's population.

It's a very believable story.

And would the good ol' US of A, the country that spirited Nazi scientists over to create a nuclear bomb, have such an idea in their inventory. A disease that would just happen to get airborne over Africa ?

Makes you think.

Absolutely,a radical intervention. I wouldn't advocate any policy of intentional genocide but if the worlds population were at the numbers of 100 years ago then there would be 5 billion less.

If somehow human reproduction could be decreased for 50 years and brought to the level of 1920 then that would ease the pressure on dwindling resources.

7 Billion is considered the maximum sustainable number of people for the planet. We are already at 7.7

Another 10,000 added during the time you typed that.

Something has to be done.

These protests won't change a thing, in fact they're a waste of time. 5 year jail sentences far from their families would be a start but it's not the point.

The world's population is growing at an alarming rate. That's the REAL extinction level event.

Absolutely,a radical intervention. I wouldn't advocate any policy of intentional genocide but if the worlds population were at the numbers of 100 years ago then there would be 5 billion less.

If somehow human reproduction could be decreased for 50 years and brought to the level of 1920 then that would ease the pressure on dwindling resources.

7 Billion is considered the maximum sustainable number of people for the planet. We are already at 7.7

Another 10,000 added during the time you typed that.

Something has to be done.

These protests won't change a thing, in fact they're a waste of time. 5 year jail sentences far from their families would be a start but it's not the point.

The world's population is growing at an alarming rate. That's the REAL extinction level event.

And by reducing the population levels you reduce emission levels.Which is desirable on both counts or at least beneficial.

The real issue is the problem has to be addressed at some time. No intervention would see a doubling of the worlds population in 100 years and that figure is conservative,because if population growth increased from the year dot to 1920 at 1.7 billion and added another 6 billion in just 100 years,who knows where we could end up.

And that is the problem not bad companies chewing up resources. But less people equals less demand which equates to less sales and lower profits...it's a tricky one

...which is why these issues are kicked down the road for others to worry about.

It's human nature to kick the can down the road.
There's a quote I like about human nature, it's first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.
I'm pretty sure, as a species, we're into the final two of those.

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Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.